Source: Radio New Zealand
Dr Madeline Shelling (Ngāti Porou) from the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland. Supplied/Madeline Shelling
A new study has linked food insecurity experienced by Māori to the ongoing consequence of colonisation rather than the result of individual choice or lifestyle.
The study, led by postdoctoral health researcher Dr Madeline Shelling (Ngāti Porou) from the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland draws on in-depth interviews with Māori kai experts.
It documents how land loss, environmental degradation, restrictive laws and the marginalisation of mātauranga Māori have dismantled Māori food systems across generations.
Shelling said the research began with a visit to her whānau in Te Araroa, where despite the community taking pride in the food they could source from the land they were still counted as being food insecure.
“It came out quite clearly in my PhD that the way that we assess kai security or food security in Aotearoa is not representing Māori values, traditions or knowledge because it’s a questionnaire made up of eight questions that are all related to how we access food by having money and obviously in te ao Māori and many indigenous cultures around the world, having money is not the only way that you access kai, and it never has been.”
The outcomes of food insecurity in Aotearoa, as a wealthy, settler colonial nation, are expressed in obesity, diabetes and non-communicable and diet-related diseases which come with stigma, she said.
“Having great access to bad food is a problem that is faced by indigenous people in settler colonised countries all over the world it’s a very common pattern and yet individual choice is still blamed and so I’m just really passionate about moving away from that stigma that there is a choice because there often is very little choice.
“What if fish and chips is the only option in your area that you can access? What if you work two jobs and you don’t have transport and the only place you can walk to is McDonald’s?
“People who have the privilege of choice don’t understand what it’s like to not have that choice.”
Shelling said reducing food insecurity to individual choice ignores systemic issues faced by people in lower socio-economic areas and it excludes people who have experienced colonisation.
“Colonisation is such an important determinant of food insecurity and it has to be acknowledged so that we can remove some of these stigmas about individuals having choice over their food, when really their environment, their intergenerational trauma, their lack of intergenerational wealth through colonisation has all contributed to their inability to choose certain types of food and particularly healthy foods.”
The study identified four key impacts of colonisation, loss of land, erosion of rangatiratanga, marginalisation of Māori knowledge and impacts on health.
“It’s hard to get healthy kai when you don’t have healthy whenua that you can access,” Shelling said.
To solve the problems of food insecurity there is a responsibility from the top down to implement policy and there’s also from the bottom up, what whānau decide to do day to day and what they are able to do, because for a lot of whānau choosing where to buy food is not an option, she said.
“I want to make it really clear that Māori are trying to do something about it and Māori don’t want to be reliant on fast foods and takeaways.
“If we truly understood how colonisation impacted our food systems, we would not call it playing the victim it’s about understanding truly the effects of colonisation on every aspect of our life and for my research in particular on food systems and then where do we go from there and that’s a responsibility that we have for tangata tiriti and tangata whenua for doing it from the top down and the bottom up.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
